We accomplished a lot in 2014, but as always there were a lot of projects that didn’t get done. When you move into a 100 yr old farmhouse that had not been lived in for awhile as you are building a small farm while raising a family and running a small business you are taking on a heavy project load. I am going to review my failures and successes for the year.

Not So Great:

This is the last year I will plant black oil sunflowers. I didn’t harvest a thing from the field I planted in 2014 and not much in 2013, the birds however really appreciated it.

The main problem I am having with the sunflowers is they mature at an uneven rate. The birds don’t mind as they will glean the ones that are currently ripe. In order for me to harvest the crop I need the majority of the crop ripe. By the time the last of the sunflowers are mature the birds have pretty well cleaned out the majority of the crop.

I initially wanted sunflowers as an addition to my poultry ration mix as well as an oil crop. Black oil sunflowers produce more oil than any other crop suited to my environment. While it doesn’t affect my farm operation, it may curtail fuel independence.

Coming in next with a abysmal harvest is spelt. 2014 was suppose to be spelt independence year. My spelt didn’t seem to survive the unusually harsh winter of 2013-2014 very well. The thin stand became very weedy, making harvest a pain.

To harvest the very weedy spelt field I had to mow it down and let the weeds dry. I then windrowed the crop along with the weeds and ran the combine down the windrow. Instead of taking a couple hours I had to wait several days to harvest. The end result was slightly more spelt than I planted. Not what you want at the end of the season.

Reid’s field corn grew great and produced well. The only problem was very heavy losses to critters. I figured planting 4x more than last year would allow the critters to have their fill and for me to still have a crop. Unfortunately I just attracted more critters. It looks like I have no choice but to fortify, or grow even more and consider my farm an animal sanctuary.

Our adventure with Midget white turkeys was another project failure. Incubating their eggs proved to be a waste of time. After the Midget Whites decided to roost in the other chicken tractor and ended up killing all the mother hen hatched chicks they were destined for the chopping block. Luckily for them someone else decided to buy them, and we were out our time, our chicks and some food but at least we recouped the price we paid plus some interest.

Calving season has been a pretty good success, but not perfect. I have plenty of cute little calves running around, but I could have had one more. Due to unknown reason #7 had a dead calf, and #7 is now on the chopping block. I plan to follow rigorous culling practices to build the best herd I can, and one thing I demand of my cows is to provide a good calf every year.

We tried goats this year starting out with 7 Saanen billies. We kept one intact in case we decided to keep goats, although it turned out that wasn’t necessary. Through the course of the summer we lost one, decided to sell four and ate the remaining two. Goats have potential, but we are not ready for them yet.

With no way to restrict the goats from the shop they climbed everywhere and left evidence of their adventure. If it can be climbed goats will give it a try, from cars to machinery they became a menace that had to be restricted to their pen. With cattle being cheaper for us to keep, easier to keep and more productive we saw no reason to keep the goat menace.

The Good and Great:

Enough bad, let me review the things that went right. We had a bumper harvest of cereal rye. The first small field yielded 25 bushels. So much the hopper was literally overflowing and the weight blew out one of the old tires on the combine. The second field again proved productive.

We harvested enough cereal rye to eat all we wanted, feed the critters all they wanted, replant, sell some and still have some left over. It was an overwhelming success.

One of the small fields of cereal rye was grazed early in the spring. The cattle prefer to eat the rye to the ground instead of grazing on the pasture. After a couple weeks I rotated them out and the rye tried to rebound. I am very impressed with rye, and believe if I allowed that field to rebound I would have still got a decent harvest from it.

We had equally good luck with smoke signals popcorn. This popcorn has proven to be a reliable crop, even producing in the 2012 drought with no irrigation. We had a bumper crop that grants us popcorn independence for 2014 and beyond.

The field I grew the popcorn on was the field that had cereal rye growing and was grazed by the cattle. With plenty of amendments added by my herd and even more hauled in from my neighbors the popcorn was well situated to produce a bumper crop.

After years of work the first big calving season was this year. I have six calves on the ground, three heifers and three bull calves. Holstein and Milk Jug are late, but that was to be expected as Milk Jug had her last calf in January when I bought her. I think Holstein was too tall for Arod to service until he grew a little more.

I will be keeping my heifers until 2020 at which time I reach capacity with a 50 head herd. Depending on the situation I may very well reach capacity before reaching the goal of 50 head. Either way beef independence day which will henceforth be a Lewis family holiday happened on December 10th with help from Meatball. This family holiday marks the last time we will have to buy beef.

After harvesting the cereal rye on the 3/4 of an acre field at the sawmill I planted buckwheat. Expecting a frost date on the 10th of October the buckwheat had just 60 days to be fruitful and multiply. I would have been okay with a poor harvest. Even a total loss was a possibility. What I didn’t expect was to get 25 bushels of buckwheat in just a little over two months. The conditions must have been perfect, and the buckwheat came through with a bumper harvest.

With 70 acres of pasture and only 20 head of mostly small cattle we have plenty of wiggle room. For the last two years I have fed my cattle hay through the winter like most farms. This year after putting up almost 3000 bales of hay and having some equipment problems I left a big chunk of the large field unharvested. It was the perfect situation to test stockpiling.

Here are the results so far. It is the middle of January and I just started giving my cattle some hay when there was some snow and ice on the ground. That result is very promising, and stockpiling is how I plan to run my operation in the future.

More year in review coming.